People love a good romance.
In the fiction publishing in the U.S., romance
novels are by far the biggest sellers, especially
in the paperback market where nearly one out
of every two novels sold are romance. Love
stories, however, are a universal human interest,
no less in Japan than in the West, so it's
not surprising to find that in the land of
the rising sun idealized, improbable, or especially
emotionally charged romances are extremely
popular. Enter Train Man. Along with
being an unusual, emotionally arresting story
of love blossoming in the unlikeliest of circumstances,
the story happens to have a basis in an allegedly
true story, as related by some anonymous soul
via Japan's enormously popular (and terrifyingly
powerful) 2channel message boards. Riding
the "Pure Love" boom, it was only
a matter of time before the smash hit novel
was made into a movie, and the sweet, innocuous,
and thoroughly unexceptional Train Man of 2005 was the result.

Following the adventures of
an individual identified to the audience only
as "Densha Otoko" (Takayuki Yamada).
Densha Otoko is a hopeless social misfit,
nerdy and reclusive to an extreme, refusing
face-to-face social interaction and collecting
anime and movie paraphernalia—the very
embodiment of the negative "otaku"
stereotype. One day, Densha Otoko happens
to be on a train, coming home after another
successful toy shopping trip in Akihabara,
when a drunk man begins assaulting a beautiful
woman (Ring's
Miki Nakatani). Otoko grows enough of a spine
to stumble into the conflict and rescue the
damsel in distress. The woman, very grateful
for his assistance, insists on sending him
a thank-you gift, and soon Otoko receives
an expensive set of Hermes tea cups. He writes
of his adventure on 2channel, where a large
audience of complete strangers urges him to
ask her out on a date. He does, going on a
series of dates with the woman of his dreams,
relying on the dating advice of his Internet
support group, while they are in turn inspired
by his transformation. But can an otaku achieve
true love? Or will the most beautiful woman
he has ever seen dump him because he is such
a complete nerd?

True or not, Train Man is choked with clichés, make no mistake,
and the classic trope of the mismatched couple
receives no significant new life here. Despite
some attempts to make the story about more
than just a simple romance between two people,
like the film's positioning of Otoko's tale
being an inspiring impetus for positive change
in the lives of those looking on, the central
romance doesn't have the strength to carry
interest. The protagonists are very thinly
characterized. Indeed, they are specifically
designed that way, as we'll see in a moment.

The film makes a weak choice
early on by never revealing the real names
of anyone. Densha Otoko is only the nerd's
nickname; essentially, he is only a template,
an amalgamation of stereotypes with little
voice of his own. The woman he loves is worse
yet; throughout the film she is referred to
as Hermes, after the gift she sent, and she,
like many female love interests in Japanese
films, is more idealization than human. She
is merely a pretty shell, smiling and charming,
instantly forgiving and virtuous, a cynically
designed empty ceramic doll to be desired
by men, but never to live or have a developed
opinion.

The actors add a modicum of
life to their roles, but not much more than
that. Takayuki Yamada, memorable in Dragonhead (2003) as the bizarre tribal psychopath, becomes
a loser so over-the-top in his social maladroit
nature that he quickly becomes annoying, stuttering
and sputtering like a ludicrous cartoon. Occasionally
Yamada's performance showed great potential,
and I recognized some of my more bashful Japanese
friends in him, but the writing doesn't do
his character justice, and neither does Yamada
when he regresses too far into generic stereotype.
Miki Nakatani, meanwhile, made very little
impression on me, except as this almost ethereally
smiling presence, blithely floating through
her scenes. There is almost nothing of substance
to Hermes' character to make me care about
the outcome of her romance with Otoko, which
is a shame.

There are a number of supporting
characters that weave into the story, most
of them being Otoko's Internet 2channel readers,
including three losers, a slacker nurse, a
tepid couple, and a hikikomori, a sort of
social recluse who never leaves his room.
Otoko's stereotypical romance inspires all
of the members of his audience to change their
lives, but each of these characters is painted
in such broad strokes that it's difficult
to care about them, either, with the possible
exception of the tepid couple. The loser trio
is especially obnoxious, operating as comic
relief and playing out one of the lamest running
gags of recent memory in which they show up
as soldiers fighting on the warfront whenever
Otoko makes further strides in his relationship
with Hermes.

The throwaway nature of the
movie reaches a climax with the very ending
of the movie, in a move that will infuriate
some. (MAJOR SPOILER WARNING) Basically, as
the movie reveals in the final moments, all
of the events of Otoko's romance were nothing
more than a daydream. This is the ultimate
copout ending, but it reflects the trustworthiness
of what one reads on message boards. Frequently,
those stories aren't true at all. But that
doesn't mean a generic daydream makes a good
movie, either. It doesn't. (END SPOILERS)

All that said, the music is
a high point. Composed by Takayuki
Hattori, who has composed a wide variety
of Toho film soundtracks, including Godzilla
vs. Spacegodzilla (1994) and Godzilla
2000: Millennium (1999), he provides
a wide variety of lively, enjoyable cues and
themes, from soft piano melodies, to a horn
theme, to a spunky electronic ditty that plays
over some of the Internet interactions. I
wouldn't mind listening to some of them on
my MP3 player.

Train Man isn't a total
loss. The movie moves briskly, and some of
the gags are genuinely funny. Something also
should be said about the production design,
which works in the themes of computerized
text and message boards creatively, in a visually
attractive and compelling manner. If only
the rest of the movie could have been so strong. Train Man doesn't completely derail;
it just clunks along that same predictable
path, with no big surprises, no one interesting
to meet, and a destination so very tediously
familiar.